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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26252287">Broken, Damaged, Whole</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/NamelesslyNightlock/pseuds/NamelesslyNightlock'>NamelesslyNightlock</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>5+1 Things, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Attraction, Canon-Typical Violence, Crusades Era Joe | Yusuf al-Kaysani &amp; Nicky | Nicolò di Genova, Enemies to Friends to Lovers, Falling In Love, Feels, Getting Together, Happy Ending, Injury, Introspection, M/M, Origin Story, Pining, Self-Acceptance, Self-Doubt, Stabbing, Swords, Temporary Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-02</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 03:08:34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,675</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26252287</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/NamelesslyNightlock/pseuds/NamelesslyNightlock</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Nicolo’s always believed that he’s broken—but when he’s with Yusuf, he doesn’t feel broken at all.<br/><br/>…or, five times Nicolo fought, and one time that he didn’t.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Joe | Yusuf Al-Kaysani/Nicky | Nicolò di Genova</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>400</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Broken, Damaged, Whole</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><span class="big">1</span><br/>
<span class="big">—expectation</span>
</p><p>Nicolo knew that he was broken.</p><p>It wasn’t just that he liked to question—that he wanted to know the <em>why</em> of things, rather than just doing as the church taught because the church was always right.</p><p>It wasn’t just that he didn’t want the same things as his father—didn’t<em> want </em>to be a knight, didn’t want the prestige.</p><p>It wasn’t even just that he didn’t look at women the same way that others did, that he was too busy watching the men who were watching <em>them.</em></p><p>No, it wasn’t any one of those things—though perhaps it was a little of them all. It was how he’d never found a way to fit in, had never found another person who saw him as he was.</p><p>Well, it was understandable. He was <em>broken</em>, he knew that. But he didn’t feel as if that meant he should give up.</p><p>When he tried to join the priesthood to atone for all that he was, they might as well have laughed in his face. He was too old, too worn, too impure<em>. </em></p><p>
  <em>Forgive me father, for I have sinned.</em>
</p><p>But some sins, they said, were more difficult to forgive than others. Some sins required more than confession or flagellation.</p><p>And some, some were not forgivable at all—but Nicolo had heard words on the wind of a chance for redemption. For everyone, <em>forever.</em> </p><p>Nicolo was the son of a lord. He’d been trained to fight, even if he had refused the chance to squire. He wanted to atone, he wanted to prove himself in the eyes of those who mattered—</p><p>He didn’t care about glory, but he wanted to <em>belong. </em></p><p>So when the priests threw him out with chastisement, Nicolo fought against the embarrassment of their berating and turned to the words of the minstrels—</p><p>And he joined the crossing to the Crusade.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><span class="big">2</span><br/>
<span class="big">—the heathens</span>
</p><p>War was hard, war was bloody, and it was not what Nicolo had been expecting.</p><p>Not because of the blood.</p><p>Not because of the gore.</p><p>But because when Nicolo came face to face with a heathen just outside the walls of Antioch—</p><p>When arrows pierced his skin and felled his horse, when a blade slashed his throat as his own sword slid between ribs—</p><p>Nicolo did not die.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><span class="big">3</span><br/>
<span class="big">—logic</span>
</p><p>Despite his motivation of redemption, Nicolo hadn’t actually gone to the Holy Land to die. In fact, he had rather been hoping that he would survive the whole ordeal. But, usually, when one’s throat is cut, one does not normally expect to wake back up.</p><p>But Nicolo <em>did.</em></p><p>It didn’t make any sense, not a single scrap. He woke with a strangled gasp, his very soul pulling from a place of blackness that no person should ever be able to come back from. He couldn’t remember if he’d walked before the pearly gates—but he knew from the aching sensation of disoriented loss that he’d been thrown from them as surely as he’d been discarded by the priesthood.</p><p>Once again, he had been cast away. Once again, he was adrift, without a place to belong.</p><p>And as his hands scrabbled at his unmarked chest, searching for the remnants of a wound that was not there… only one thought crossed through his mind.</p><p>He’d always known he was broken, but this… this was something else.</p><p>Little wonder the priests had labelled him unforgivable. Perhaps they’d been able to sense that nothing could redeem him of his sins.</p><p>But if this was the punishment for choosing to love in the way that God had made him… then how could there be any good in the world at all?</p><p>No, surely that was wrong. Nicolo knew there was good, he’d seen it. He’d seen it in the way the healthy could care for the sick, in the way parents claimed children not their own, in the way a soldier offered a hand to an enemy—</p><p>And in the softness of a man’s gentle smile, no matter what he’d been taught about the feelings he felt.</p><p>No, Nicolo knew that there was still good in the world, and he <em>knew</em> that this had happened to him for a reason.</p><p>Logic claimed that Nicolo was cursed.</p><p>Nicolo claimed otherwise.</p><p>And if he was doomed to live outside the rules that governed the realm of men, then he would simply have to devise his own to make sense of the world he was left in.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><span class="big">4</span><br/>
<span class="big">—Yusuf al–Kaysani</span>
</p><p><em>He was not the only one</em>.</p><p>The thought was the only thing that ran through Nicolo’s mind as he spied the heathen upon the field of battle.</p><p>It was another city, another siege—but the same <em>face,</em> the same person, the same <em>blade.</em></p><p>Dying hurt just as much as the first time, but Nicolo kept his eyes wide—staring upon the visage of his two-time killer, wanting to remember in case he saw that face again.</p><p>As it turned out, the attempt was unnecessary. The man was still there when Nicolo woke up.</p><p>“You too?” He spoke Genoese with the same accent as the traders who came to Genova across the sea.</p><p>And Nicolo was across the space between them before either could blink, his sword buried in the man’s gut.</p><p>“Me too,” he replied—and his Genoese was as perfect as the Saracen’s blood was red.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><span class="big">5</span><br/>
<span class="big">—attraction</span>
</p><p>They say that in the moment before you kill someone, you hold a piece of them in your hands. That in swinging the blade, you have chosen to take responsibility of their fate, and in that choice hold guardianship of their soul.</p><p>Nicolo couldn’t help but wonder… how many times must one kill a man, before a part of their soul entwines with one’s own?</p><p>By the time they rode away from what seemed like the beginning of the end of Jerusalem, Nicolo had killed Yusuf al-Kaysani so many times that he felt a connection to the man which he had never felt with anyone else before.</p><p>It took him a long time to realise what it was. Took walking side by side, setting up a camp, holding meagre conversation and realising that Yusuf was not only <em>not</em> a monster, but also a clever, entertaining, and <em>kind</em> man.</p><p>It took him gazing at Yusuf far too openly, wondering what it would feel like to touch that smooth skin in something other than violence.</p><p>It shouldn’t have taken so long. <em>Broken</em>, after all, was a common diagnosis for the odd thoughts in Nicolo’s head.</p><p>But this… this didn’t <em>seem</em> broken. When Yusuf had first held out a hand instead of a sword, Nicolo had felt like taking it was the only right thing to do.</p><p>And while he watched Yusuf scribble in his sketchbook from across their paltry campfire, lit to keep them warm through the cold desert night—</p><p>Nicolo didn’t think that <em>broken</em> was the word for what he was beginning to feel.</p><p>It wasn’t <em>right</em>, either—Yusuf was a heathen, the enemy. Just because they couldn’t kill each other didn’t mean that they should be anything more than travelling companions.</p><p>And when they inevitably got into something of an argument, Nicolo took the opportunity to remind himself of the rules he’d made, of the role he’d carved out for himself—of the goal to make this Holy Land as safe for pilgrims as he possibly could. That, after all, had to have been the reason for his staying in the world.</p><p>So it was that Nicolo’s blade slashed through flesh once again—</p><p>But this time, instead of accomplishment, Nicolo felt only regret.</p><p> </p><p> </p><p><span class="big">+1</span><br/>
<span class="big"><em><s>—love</s></em></span>
</p><p>By the time Nicolo realised he didn’t <em>want</em> to keep killing Yusuf, they’d already managed a full month without murdering each other.</p><p>He wasn’t sure how it had happened. He hadn’t made a conscious choice, he just… no longer felt like it was something he needed to do. When he looked at Yusuf, he didn’t see an enemy.</p><p>He didn’t even see a friend.</p><p>He saw someone who was like him, not just because they both couldn’t die, but because Yusuf seemed to understand him in a way that no one else ever had.</p><p>It wasn’t that Yusuf accepted every part of him—they’d argued enough in the beginning to prove that Yusuf <em>definitely</em> disagreed with several of Nicolo’s life choices. That came to be fine, though, as most of what Yusuf held issue with Nicolo could no longer agree with, either.</p><p>Nicolo’s perceptions shifted by day, his mission of keeping pilgrims safe blurring into the wider goal of protecting <em>people,</em> no matter where they came from. As they travelled, as Nicolo saw more of the world, he <em>saw</em> that it was so much bigger than he’d ever thought, and it held so many more wonders than anyone could ever imagine.</p><p>And yet… nothing on God’s earth held more wonder to Nicolo than the curve of Yusuf’s kind smile, the tenor of his low laugh, the care in his every word.</p><p>Yusuf spoke like language was a weapon rather than just a tool—he could tear Nicolo apart just as easily as he could fill him with warmth.</p><p>It wasn’t just that Nicolo didn’t want to kill him—soon, the thought of <em>anything</em> harming Yusuf in any way made Nicolo feel sick.</p><p>Yes, when Nicolo looked at Yusuf… he didn’t see an enemy, and he didn’t see only a friend. Without even realising it, he’d started to see the other half of his soul.</p><p>And as Nicolo realised that his wonder-filled gaze was being reflected back—</p><p>As Yusuf began to return his smiles—</p><p>As their hands entwined together, as their nights were spent pressed close, as their words grew tender and their touches filled with affection—</p><p>Nicolo didn’t feel broken at all.</p><p>In fact, the first time that Yusuf’s lips pressed against his own in the sweetest kind of caress… Nicolo stopped trying to fight against the thoughts in his head, and wondered if this was what it meant to feel whole.</p>
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